The big Pa. issue candidates won’t talk about | Will Bunch Newsletter

Again. Some folks seemed numb on Sunday afternoon to the news that — for the second time in just over two months — a man attempted to assassinate GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. This time it was a gunman spotted by the Secret Service and later apprehended who almost had Trump in the sights of his AK-47 as the ex-POTUS golfed on his Florida course. If you grew up in the 1960s and early ‘70s, this happened all the time. JFK. RFK. MLK. George Wallace. Malcolm X. Everyone wants to point fingers, but here’s the reality. Violence is as American as cherry pie.

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Last year, a West Philadelphia man named Jim Cummings, then 63, became the oldest person ever to earn a nursing degree at Holy Family University. But he didn’t race through the exhausting two-year accelerated degree program for the accolades. At an age where some folks retire, Cummings needed the money from a higher-paying career — the only way he knew how to pay down a whopping $240,000 in government and private student debt for himself, his wife, and their son.

“As a society, we don’t want older people to struggle,” Cummings told me on Monday, reflecting on how the government that once enacted Social Security is now seeking literally hundreds of millions of dollars in college debt from older Americans. Today, Cummings prays for good health so he can keep working on his feet as a nurse every day, knowing there is only one other alternative for escaping his debt.

“If I die, my student loan will be cancelled,” he said. “We are literally worth more dead than alive, even without life insurance.”

You might be surprised how many older Americans are in the same boat, drowning under the weight of college debt in the only nation where such a problem exists. In 2022, one study found 3.5 million Americans in Cummings’ over-60 demographic owe a whopping $1.25 billion in federal loans for higher education, and the number of older Americans with college debt is growing at a faster rate than other age group, and with more of them sinking into default.

The realization by over-60 folks like Cummings that they’ll probably still be in hock to Washington on the day they die is one of the most vexing aspects of a U.S. student debt crisis that has ballooned to $1.75 trillion overall — that’s more than every American owes on all of his credit cards — and has proved mostly resistant to efforts by the Biden administration to whittle that mountain down.

Now, as Biden prepares to leave office in four months, activists are urging the 46th president to take emergency action to cancel all student loans held by these older debtors, claiming that a 1965 federal education law that governs much of the federal financial-aid programs allows the Secretary of Education to take such a bold action.

“We are not aging out of our debts, we are aging into them,” Eleni Schirmer, a writer and academic who focuses on student-loan issues, told a news conference ahead of a D.C. protest held last week to urge the administration and lawmakers to support action on senior debt. “And absent swift government action, this situation will probably continue to worsen.”

They certainly had a sympathetic ear in the Biden administration. After some dithering, the president —ahead of the 2022 midterms — unveiled an ambitious relief plan for all debtors that would have wiped away as much as $20,000 in debt for many borrowers, at a cost estimated at $400-500 million. But the U.S. Supreme Court struck that down, saying Biden lacked the authority for such a move without Congress.

Instead, the administration has targeted debt cancelation at scandal-scarred for-profit institutions such as Corinthian Colleges, for a total of $168.5 billion. The Debt Collective, a leading activist group, believes the authority the Education Department has used to wipe out those debts can — and should — be extended to borrowers over age 50.

Still, their protest, held in the shadow of the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, received little attention. Indeed, it’s been somewhat surprising and disappointing how little impact the student debt issue has made upon the fall election. TV pundits and others have insisted the top issue in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania is fracking, and there’s no doubt that the jobs-vs.-environment debate matters here to many.

But there probably should have been a debate question about student loans, considering that Pennsylvania currently ranks second-worst state in the nation for college debt, according to WalletHub — caused in part by the state’s higher-than-average tuition for its public universities. And what we know now about where the candidates stand isn’t nearly enough.

To be sure, Trump has no interest in fixing the college-debt crisis. He’d probably make it worse. “Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America,” his running-mate Sen. JD Vance posted in 2022. “Republicans must fight this with every ounce of our energy and power.” Trump and Vance would also look to repeal some relief programs now on the books.

Experts believe Harris will try to expand some of the relief programs embraced by the Biden administration, looking for ways to work with Congress or craft measures that will pass muster in a conservative federal judiciary. But while the vice president was reportedly a key advocate for the aggressive debt cancelation program struck down by SCOTUS, she hasn’t played up the issue on the campaign trail — instead proposing to open more federal jobs to workers without bachelor degrees.

That feels like a missed opportunity. If Harris wants to win Pennsylvania and the other make-or-break swing states in November, her best shot is winning back all of the young voters who were alienated from politics during the Biden years. And poll after poll has shown that action on student debt ranks near the top of issues that matter to the under-35 electorate. A more detailed, and aggressive plan to liberate more of the estimated 43 Americans who have student-loan debt would not only impress the youth vote, but older folks like Philly’s Cummings.

Cummings, a former science librarian, told me he didn’t accumulate his own substantial debt until later in life, and an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at studying occupational therapy. He said he owed $52,000 at the end of that experience, has worked to pay back some $29,000 of it, yet now owes $62,000. “You’ve heard of boy math and girl math,” he asked. “This is student loan math.”

If anybody in American politics understands the physical and emotional strain of working into your 80s, it should be Biden, our oldest president. Before he gets to enjoy his retirement, Biden should tell Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to take out his pen and make sure that Cummings and millions of other seniors deep in debt have a chance at doing the same.

Question: How have we not seen [Ohio Democratic Sen.] Sherrod Brown in Dayton/ Springfield? — I, Vermectin. (@engelr412) via X/Twitter

Answer: Good question, as I have wondered myself how the Democrats can and should best respond to the shocking inflammatory rhetoric of JD Vance and Donald Trump that includes a willingness to “create stories” — also known as lying — about the hard-working Haitian-American immigrants who have moved to Springfield, Ohio. This week, public schools and area colleges — among other local institutions — have been shut down by a flood of terroristic threats that seem inspired by the GOP’s national candidates. Given the tense situation, it kind of makes sense for politicians of all stripes to avoid the area, for now. But I think Kamala Harris or her running mate Tim Walz could make a powerful statement by visiting another town with a large Haitian influx — the swing-state community of Charleroi in western Pennsylvania — and showing support for the folks there. While politically Vance and Trump are hanging themselves with their lies, it’s also important that Democrats make a positive statement that America has long been, and will continue to be, a nation of immigrants.

As I feared, the one-day lag between me asking about the debate winner and the actual debate meant there weren’t a lot of responses. The few diehards who did get back to me agreed with about 63% of America, as well as common sense, that Kamala Harris won in a landslide. Mary Black wrote that Donald Trump “didn’t really answer any of the questions or put forth one single policy position. He spewed forth insanity.”

📮This week’s question: Thanks to good work this time by the Secret Service, yet another Trump assassination scheme was foiled this weekend. Do you agree with those who claim that overheated political rhetoric is putting the GOP candidate at risk? And whose rhetoric? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer. Please put “Trump rhetoric” in the subject line.

The late legendary investigative journalist I.F. Stone is famous for his spiel that “all governments lie,” but in 2024 Stone’s words feel like a gross understatement. Exhibit A in recent days has been Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who conceded in an interview that he and Donald Trump decided to “create stories” to whip up a false, xenophobic frenzy about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio and get attention. But remember Stone’s mantra: One of the biggest whoppers of 2024 came from Democratic President Joe Biden, who — in discussing the fraught situation in the Middle East — declared in early February, “If you harm an American, we will respond.”

Tell that to the family of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old Turkish-American activist and dual citizen who lived most of her life in Seattle and was protesting against new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on Sept. 2 when an Israeli military sniper shot her in the head and killed her. Numerous eyewitnesses to the young activist’s killing insist it occurred during a calm moment in the protest and that she and those around her posed no threat whatsoever — a cold-blooded assassination.

Biden’s February fury about harming Americans should have come with a giant asterisk, telling supporters of the Palestinian cause in the Middle East that they need not apply. Egyi’s outraged family says they have heard nothing from either Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee to replace him, since her killing. Yet when the U.S. president was asked about the incident by reporters, he knew enough to spout the Israeli initial line that the bullet appeared to be a ricochet and that the Israeli soldier wasn’t aiming at Eygi — instantly contradicted by both eyewitness and journalistic accounts. A subsequent statement from Biden did say he was “outraged” by the killing, but there’s been little pressure for a truly independent investigation into what really happened, let alone any sanctions for those who killed an American peace activist.

“Let us be clear, an American citizen was killed by a foreign military in a targeted attack,” Eygi’s family said in a statement. “The appropriate action is for President Biden and Vice President Harris to speak with the family directly, and order an independent, transparent investigation into the killing of Aysenur, a volunteer for peace.” Biden insists that he is working relentlessly for a ceasefire in the region and supports a two-state solution that would recognize Palestinian aspirations. Honoring his February pledge to defend all Americans in the region would seem a positive step in that right direction.

On this date 13 years ago, a ragtag army of activists in lower Manhattan, with almost no news coverage, launched a protest they called Occupy Wall Street. I wasn’t there, unfortunately, but I did celebrate the one-year anniversary that looked at what the movement had accomplished — and failed to accomplish. I wrote: “Occupy caught on with traditional liberals who were frustrated that no one in either party or in the news media was talking about the income gap or issues like student debt. Since then, President Obama and some Democrats have talked the talk - even as action in gridlocked Washington remains elusive.” It still is, unfortunately. Read the rest from Sept. 17, 2012: “They say it’s your birthday.”

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